


Midnight at the End of a Decade

by MedicBaymax



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, College, DxS, Friendship, Gen, Military, New Year's Eve, Phoenix Team - Freeform, Whump, phoenix foundation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21934144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedicBaymax/pseuds/MedicBaymax
Summary: The 2010s were truly the decade that made MacGyver, or rather, the decade he, literally and figuratively, built himself out of. A series of vignettes tracing Mac’s experience of New Year’s Eve from 2010 to 2020.
Relationships: Angus MacGyver & Desiree "Desi" Nguyen, Angus MacGyver & Matilda "Matty" Webber (MacGyver TV 2016), Harry Jackson & Angus MacGyver, Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Nikki Carpenter/Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Riley Davis & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Samantha Cage & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Wilt Bozer & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

Mac didn’t realize it was 2010 until 1:03AM. 

Nineteen years old, he sat in an overly-warm dorm room. There was a box fan in the window, blowing cold outdoor air in through the bulk of a heavily duct-taped computer tower. The air that came out the other side was probably close to 100F. Mac himself sat in a t-shirt and gym shorts on the room’s industrial grey carpet, coaxing the most computing power he could out of the formerly non-functional, fifteen-year-old Dell he’d bought at a yard sale for $50. “C’mon,” he hissed, its hulking beige cathode-ray monitor seconds away from bathing the room in a disappointing blue glow.

It wasn’t until it finally failed that Mac let himself rock backwards and look at the phone he’d thrown on the bed four hours previously.

[1:03 AM, (2) missed texts] the tiny front screen announced. Mac flipped it open, discovering both had been from Harry, an hour ago, one wishing him a Happy New Year and the other a grainy clipart picture of a firework. He smiled, realizing that his grandfather would have had stay up until 3AM in order to text him Happy New Year at the correct hour. Mac felt guilty at the thoughtfulness, and his lack of response. 

A month ago, during finals week, he’d told Harry that he hadn’t been able to come up with the money for a plane ticket home over break. It hadn’t quite been the truth. In reality, he’d had the money, even on top of his scholarship. He’d just… not felt like it. Being alone for a month in the dorms sounded like too great of an opportunity to pass up. Just him, some spare parts, a nearly empty campus to wander…

The first two weeks of it had been excellent. 

But as time went on, Mac had begun to feel lonely.

His grandfather had called on Christmas day. They’d talked for about a half hour, after which Harry sent him pictures of his tree and the festive meal he was having with an old friend. It had looked cozy, and Mac found himself regretting his decision to stay. For his own Christmas meal, he’d snuck into a holiday potluck at the international dorm with a food storage container. He’d eaten some kind of lukewarm noodle thing alone in his room. 

Mac tried to shake off the guilt and decided he needed to cool down a little. He powered down the computer but left the fan running, then grabbed a sweater off his bed and headed out to the lounge. The fall semester door dec caught his eye. There was a block of black sharpie on it where he’d scratched out “Angus” written in his RA’s neat handwriting. He’d scrawled “MacGyver” below it, and the entire semester it had looked a little off. He figured he should email her that he wanted “MacGyver” written, but crossing it out again seemed easier than sending the email. 

The cinderblock hallway was bright with industrial tube lights, illuminating the patterns on the walls and carpet. The lounge was midway down the hall and dark and Mac didn’t turn on the lights. 

It smelled like the pizza he’d eaten in it the evening before, but stale and unpleasant now. He looked out of the window, watching the snow fall down over a practice field. He watched a group of three students make their way drunkenly back to the dorm behind his. As they left his field of vision, he looked back down at his phone and texted his grandfather back. 

“Happy New Year’s, Harry.”


	2. Chapter 2

Mac knew exactly when 2010 ticked over into 2011. 

He knew because an irate man in a flat-brimmed hat had screamed it in his face. 

Basic Training had started on December 26th. On December 31st, an hour after lights out, they’d come back on. Instructors stormed into the barracks. 

“GET UP! PT CLOTHES! OUTSIDE! NOW!” They came through, screaming in faces, throwing bedclothes on the floor, violently shaking bedframes and ripping pillows out from under heads. Mac’s eyes shot open, his heart beating hard in his chest. Despite the adrenaline coursing through him, even more than the terror of waking up to a screaming man’s teeth inches from his nose, he felt a bone-deep exhaustion. Forcing back a groan, he quickly worked a t-shirt and sweater on over his head and hurried outside with the rest of the class. 

Less than three minutes later, lined up in alphabetical order, they all stood shivering in a cold, soaked pit of wood chips. Next to him, a young man who barely looked old enough to be out of high school was standing in a t-shirt and already shivering. 

“FORWARD LEANING REST!” Mac grudgingly got down into pushup position. Normally, he thought, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But the hour in bed had stiffened him up without actually giving him any rest, and his arms were already shaking the second they took his weight. He willed them not to collapse under him. 

Someone, it seemed, or maybe more than one someone, had decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve with some contraband liquor. The instructors had caught them. Then, taking the festivities as a criticism on their ability to tire out a class, had gotten everyone up for an impromptu midnight PT session to make sure the recruits were getting what they’d “paid” for. A crack about “what, in our taxes?” crossed Mac’s mind, but he didn’t want to be the guy that kept everyone out for an extra hour. Or, at least, not the one to get blamed for it. 

“IT’S 2300 HOURS NOW!” An instructor shouted, “WHAT DO YOU SAY WE COUNT DOWN THE NEW YEAR TOGETHER?” 

A chorus of “YES, SARGENT!” Went up in the crowd. Even in the last 5 days, an hour was hardly the longest they’d worked out. But it was an hour after 5 days of crappy sleep, PT, and classes that were interesting but taught to the lowest common denominator. It felt like hell. 

Ten minutes in to the New Year’s Ladder, Mac’s hands were numb. Water from the wood chips had soaked into the back of his sweater during a set of flutter kicks, and rain had started falling. It would continue to fall into the next morning. 

All through that session, and in the days that followed, he wondered what he was doing there. Harry had been in the Army. He’d fought in Vietnam. After a rocky semester at MIT, Mac had thought Harry would be proud of him when he’d announced he had joined the Army. In reality, Harry hadn’t said much about it in either direction. Eventually, he even started changing the subject when Mac wanted to talk about it. 

He’d moved back to Harry’s the summer before he left. He and Bozer had spent some of that season doing odd jobs around the town to save up money. Then Bozer had started film school that fall, and Mac had found himself left with a weird emptiness, not quite not a college student anymore, but in a sort of no man’s land before becoming a soldier. 

On Christmas, the day before Basic started, Harry had hugged him tighter than he’d ever hugged him before. Mac remembered wanting to pull away the whole time, but didn’t. When Harry finally broke the hug, there were tears in his eyes. “It ain’t like the movies, bud.” He said. “You get through it. And you come home to me, okay?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As a disclaimer, and as you may have noticed from the previous chapter, I have no military experience whatsoever.

Mac counted down the start of 2012 laying on his cot in the dark tent. 

He was a month in Afghanistan, give or take a few days. It had been the slowest month of his life. Slower than the year his mom died. Slower than his first semester at MIT. Slower than Basic Training, even. And he’d thought, in his heart of hearts, that nothing could possibly have been slower than that. 

Culture shock could do that. 

He was sheltered, in part, from the Afghani culture. It was the base culture he wasn’t quite finding himself in.

It took a certain kind of person for EOD, and the men and women he’d trained with were the type he could talk to about electrical engineering and chemistry and biodefense. Their training together had been difficult and demanding, but it was fascinating and taught to people who were interested. The drills were difficult and required creativity and he’d really begun to truly feel he belonged somewhere. That maybe he had, in fact, made the right choice in joining the Army. 

But then he’d graduated. Graduated and gotten on a plane and actually showed up on the base in the middle of the desert to do the job he’d trained practically all the last year for, and he’d found himself with a very different group of people. People, like Jack Dalton, who were smart in a very different way than he was. And he was thankful for that, honestly he was. Even just in that first month, Dalton had saved his life more than once. Pulled him out of the scariest situations of his life with a look of disgust, as though Mac were seriously trying his patience at all times, no matter what he did. He respected Dalton for his abilities, but he wasn’t someone Mac could see himself being friends with. Virtually none of the people here were. 

Mac quickly learned how to talk a big game, how to fit in on the surface and stay (mostly) out of trouble. He’d known it would be difficult. He’d always respected the concept of deployment as what would be one of the most trying times of his life. But he’d thought that difficulty would come in the form of job stress- of the fact that he was literally defusing bombs in a war zone for a living. 

That part, it turned out, was the “easy” part. Well, not easy in the traditional sense. But having something to focus on so precisely, with such high stakes, felt almost like recreation in a weird sort of way. It was the social part that was challenging him most acutely. Never being alone. How quickly tempers flared when there was no option to walk away and cool off. How people acted when they were bored or scared or tired and either weren’t allowed or didn’t know how to work those emotions out in a reasonable or healthy way. 

He watched the glowing second hand tick towards midnight. “Five…” He whispered, hearing the snore of one of his bunkmates who had also foregone the festivities. “Four… Three… Two… One.” He wasn’t sure how perfectly accurate his watch was, but the loud cheers that erupted ten seconds later in a tent a few over told him it wasn’t so far off. 

In the end, he probably should have gone to the party after all. It might have earned him some cred with the people he shared a tent with. Speaking of which…  
The tent flap flew open, and none other than Jack Dalton stumbled in. “How was the party?” Mac asked. Dalton stopped, squinting in the darkness. 

“F’ck off, bomb nerd.” Dalton said. He stifled a giggle before falling onto his bunk, his shin or possibly his head hitting one of the posts in what sounded like a painful way, but he didn’t seem to notice. Mac instinctively checked that Dalton’s face was uncovered. Then, finally, he rolled over on the sweat spot he’d cultivated over the last few hours and fell asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Mac didn’t remember 2012 becoming 2013. 

He was told later that he was awake for it. 

When he thought really hard, he could come up with the image of a pile of orange-tinged rubble, of a world that was quieter than it should have been, of being dragged across some rough ground. 

The first thing he actually remembered clearly must have been some time around 0700. A coolness had settled over the desert, and he was shivering. Above him, a clear, early morning sky was halfway between daylight and star-studded darkness. For a moment, he’d stared at it, confused. Whether he was actually dead crossed his mind briefly, but he dismissed the idea as he began to identify sources of pain. 

His head, primarily. It felt like his brain was trying to push its way out through his eye sockets. His chest hurt too, and it felt like there was resistance when he tried to take a deep breath. 

“Jack?” He asked. 

The sound came out weirdly distorted. Out of the corner of his eye something moved, and he shifted his eyes to get a better look. The tiny movement made the entire world spin horribly and he nearly threw up, not being able to conjure up the energy to turn himself over on his side. He closed his eyes, hoping it would help, but the spinning sensation didn’t stop. 

Someone was speaking. He could hear words, but they were garbled and soft, almost sounding like someone speaking quickly in a language he only kind of spoke. He couldn’t even pick one of them out that he really recognized. 

When he opened his eyes again, Jack was kneeling over him. He was the one speaking, and the combination of the words and Jack’s mouth moving helped his comprehension. A little at least. He picked out his name, the word “buddy”, and the inflection of a question. He squinted, trying not to move his eyes again. He didn’t want Jack to think he was ignoring him, but it seemed to take a substantially long time for his brain to translate the garbled noise into language. To the point where he couldn’t fake everything being okay.

“Can’t hear you.” He finally settled on as an explanation. Jack stopped talking, a look of concern flashing on his face. He paused, thinking, then held two fists together over Mac’s face. 

“Boom” he mouthed, pulling his hands apart outward, miming an explosion. That made a lot of sense, Mac thought. Why it was so dark he didn’t quite understand, but he didn’t have the brainspace to make everything make sense. Forgetting the experience of just minutes before, Mac tried to nod his agreement, but everything started spinning again and he had to squeeze his eyes shut again to stop himself from throwing up. 

When things died down again, Mac felt Jack’s hand on his chest. He relaxed slightly but didn’t open his eyes. 

The explosion had been a relatively minor one, he later learned, but he’d been close to it. The next thing he would remember would be a combat hospital where he stayed for a few days after before being transferred to an American military base in Germany. 

He spent nearly two months there, recovering from a moderate concussion and bilateral eardrum perforations, having been spared more serious injuries from the bomb suit and the fact that it had been in the open air instead of in a building. 

Then he’d been cleared for duty and given a choice- return to the US and serve the rest of his tour and the next portion of his obligation stateside or return to Afghanistan.   
Jack had nearly punched him when he’d walked back into their tent a week later. This time it wasn’t because he was pissed that he’d have to spend the next 5 months covering him, but because Mac had been handed the opportunity to go somewhere, anywhere, besides Afghanistan and had turned it down. 

Mac had tactfully chosen not to point out that he had done the same for Mac’s sake less than a year earlier, replacing what would have been less than a week to his return to the US with another 18 months in the sandbox. 

At that point, Mac felt, it was the least he could do. And it wasn’t out of a simple sense of duty to the man either- over the last year they’d developed an improbable friendship, growing from a begrudging tolerance to a deep sense of camaraderie. 

And the bear hug Jack had eventually given him to shut up his sprawling explanation told him he’d made the right choice.


	5. Chapter 5

2013 had been a whirlwind, and as Mac stood at the back of the party, watching the drunken crowd at the bar just off base count down the last few seconds as it ticked over into a fresh 2014, he was kind of glad to see it over. 

“Happy New Year!!” Cheers erupted, people kissed, Mac felt a cleansing sort of emptiness come over him. He knew the New Year mark was essentially arbitrary, that everything that was stressing him out thirty seconds ago still waited for him back on base. But it was refreshing to feel as though something had started over. That this time didn’t belong to the latest year that had taken so much out of him. 

He checked his phone. A few friends and coworkers had texted him, wishing him a happy new year. He tried not to feel sad again as he noticed none of them were from Harry. 

His grandfather had held on until he was back stateside, and Mac had gotten to see him again before he’d passed. That was more than several of the people he’d served with could say about their own friends and relatives. As Harry’s only living relative, Mac had been granted a week of leave to be the one to plan and attend the simple memorial service back in Mission City. Even though that was lucky by Army standards, he’d felt guilty for not being there during the last few years of his grandfather’s life. The man who’d raised him, and he’d… 

Mac shook his head. It was true, it had happened, and occasionally he found himself falling back into that hole, thinking he needed to punish himself for what obligations he’d neglected in recent years. But that was the past, and no amount of wallowing would change how everything had finally shaken out. 

He shot back a couple of the texts, replied to one of his coworkers’ social media posts, then considered turning in for the night. He had, after all, made it to 2014.   
Jack had promised to be here, but in what was becoming a pattern for him these days had begged off last minute, leaving Mac with a bunch of loud strangers he didn’t have the energy to befriend just to have someone to hang out with. He hadn’t quite enjoyed himself, but the release he’d felt at the end of the countdown had been almost worth it. Things at the start of 2014 were open, empty, but not quite in a bad way. 

Looking forward into the new year felt like he was rebuilding after a housefire and the insurance check had just come in. Things would never be the same, but at least now he could pick out the carpet he’d always wanted and buy some cabinets that didn’t need Velcro to hold them closed.


	6. DXS

2015: DXS

Two weeks before his military obligation was up, a serious-looking man approached him at work. His name was Gordon Price and he was from the Department of External Services. He wanted to offer MacGyver a job. 

When he’d returned to the US from Afghanistan, Mac had split time between training new EOD specialists and analyzing the photos of explosive ordinance sent back from various theatres. He’d found himself on a couple of short deployments tracking bombmakers and briefing higher ups on the likeliest sources of various devices. 

To be completely honest with himself, Mac had put off thinking about what he would do after the military until the last possible second. He’d even contemplated the idea of re-enlisting just to know what he would be doing next year.

He liked explosives. He was good at them. But bombs didn’t come up all that often in the civilian world, and outside of that and the small amount of experience he now had in intelligence work, he didn’t have much beyond a few semesters of basic sciences to offer a company. Price seemed to know all this already, which annoyed Mac a little. 

The DXS job wanted him to do essentially what he’d been doing for the Army. Plus, he’d get to move back to LA, which was where Bozer- essentially the only civilian he’d kept in touch with- was living. And the pay was… substantially more than the Army was shelling out. 

He’d accepted the offer. 

LA meant he’d have a place to live, too. After his grandfather had died, he’d been left with the house. Being out of state with limited leave time, he’d offered Bozer the chance to live in it rent free if he kept it up and handled the taxes. Then in his second year of film school, it was something he’d eagerly taken Mac up on. Bozer had been more than willing to gain a roomie, especially one who knew how to fix a toilet without the input of fifteen frustrating hours on YouTube. 

And so this night he was on the couch with Bozer and a few of his film school friends wearing some awful hats, watching the recorded coverage of the ball dropping in New York. Mac had to admit he’d been wary of the celebration. He’d started to think NYE wasn’t exactly his favorite holiday, and maybe he should stop trying to force it.

But this year it really wasn’t so bad. He was in his own house with people he mostly knew and the ability to just get up off the couch and go to bed if it ended up sucking. The only thing that really could have improved things is if Jack had taken him up on his invite to stay over through the end of the winter holidays. Jack had said he'd had to work. 

Jack. The man had certainly been through the ringer in the last year. A bout of depression had hit him hard and by the time Mac had figured out what was going on things were so bad Mac was sure he’d never see the Jack he’d met in Afghanistan ever again. 

But over time he’d fought his way back. Living on the opposite side of the country, Mac hadn’t had as much of a hand in it as he would have liked, but he liked to think their twice-weekly video calls had maybe made a difference. 

“….Five…. Four…. Three…. Two….” Mac felt his phone ring in his pocket and jumped over the back of the couch just as everyone else jumped up cheering. 

“Hey Jack.” He answered. 

“Hey buddy.” Jack slurred on the other end of the line. “Happy New Year!” 

It struck Mac again that it would have been 0400 Jack’s time. A little pang of regret hit him as he remembered the last person to do that kind of thinking for him. The pain wasn’t distant yet, but it was weakening slightly. 

“Imma go to bed now, kay?” Jack said. Mac heard the deet-deet of the dropped call before he could respond. He smiled, shaking his head slightly.


End file.
